The old shipyards of the north east may not be the first place that comes to mind when thinking of digital innovation. But the region is reinventing itself through three 'City' initiatives.
Digital City is driving investment in the Tees Valley; Newcastle has developed Science City to reinforce strengths in science research; and Sunderland has launched Software City on the back of its status as the most broadband-connected place in the UK.
This may be one reason why the regional press is also setting trends in online innovation, but for Darren Thwaites, editor at the award-winning Teesside Evening Gazette, there is another: the people.
When Thwaites joined the Gazette in August 2005, the title's IC Teesside website was 'auto-populated with content from a different office', he recalls.
"We had no editorial control. The real change came in 2006 when we became the first Trinity Mirror centre to take the newspaper brand online with the launch of www.eveninggazette.co.uk. Then it became ours to own and cherish, just like the paper."
Going hyperlocal online
Since this move the Evening Gazette and its rebranded Gazette Live website have won national acclaim for the hyperlocal strategy and postcode sites run by community organisers, who encourage the development of user-generated content. The paper now has 20 sites running with contributions from 420 local content generators.
Not only did it win last year's Press Gazette regional website of the year awards, but the hyperlocal strategy on Teesside has been so successful that the newspaper has been able to invest in more staff. The next growth target, however, is based on its broader community.
"We had a very good start with our community organisers. We got to 100 people quickly. The challenge is to keep the momentum going," says Thwaites.
"We'll never have everyone, but we'd like as many as possible: local groups, schools, football clubs, Brownies. And 1,000 [contributors to the sites] is not the end-game, but it's good to have the next target so we don't stagnate."
Newcastle's Journal Live website has adopted a similar user-generated strategy.
"We're rolling out our local sites in the run up to Christmas in batches of five, starting with the most populous parts of Northumberland," says multimedia editor Matt McKenzie.
The sites are supported by Northumberland County Council, a partnership which McKenzie hopes will help promote the network to users
"We are recruiting bloggers, so what you see on the sites are a mix of user generated posts and content we've uploaded from The Journal. It's early days, but there's a network of bloggers on Teesside and we're hoping to replicate that sort of success," he says.
That success has been contagious: Journal Live recently passed a million page impressions a month for the first time, up 26 per cent year-on-year with 214,272 unique users.
Another reason for this, beyond user-generated content, is speed: the ability to develop new sites quickly and the speed at which they are encouraging and acting on user feedback.
"I think the opportunity online presents - to develop new platforms relatively quickly and cheaply - is key to the future," says McKenzie.
"We upgraded our NUFC [Newcastle United Football Club] and SAFC [Sunderland Athletic Football Club] channels on the website with minimal fuss and the users responded. We launched a survey into the state of Newcastle United and 3,500 responded - a mass response we'd never have been able to access before digital.
"Similarly we're going to upgrade our culture channel on Journal Live soon - something we've achieved through proper debate, discussion and with little constraints on its development.
Changes in the newsroom
The changes have not come without challenges, however, particularly in working practices. McKenzie continues: "It's demanded a mindset shift, because previously journalists didn't always consider this data, we just wrote the stories and expected people to read them."
But it is exactly this mentality change that has allowed staff at the papers to make the most of the speed with which technology can change - and the users can respond.
"I think we're getting smarter at using data to identify what our users want - and when. For years, we only had ABC [Audit Bureau of Circulations] and JICREG stats that told us how many readers we had, but not how to speak to people or what they want.
"Now we can identify which particular stories people read on our sites, which sites they come from, which ones they go to after us (...) we know when to hold web chats because we know when the traffic peaks during the day."
The experience has been similar for Lee Hall, digital editor at Johnston Press' Sunderland Echo.
"The clearest change from being a newspaper-only press is that the web brings more bites at the cherry for each story. It develops from a breaking NIB to splash to in-depth story in a much shorter time scale, with various live iterations, and creates new story developments, story comments and forum postings providing leads or additional live paper copy," explains Hall.
"The web hasn't changed the live story that goes in the paper, but the newsroom staff are becoming advocates for their stories across forums and other blogs and sites, which is bringing in audience and, more importantly, building the brand among new communities."
For all three papers, the future is very much hyperlocal: failure to move the regional brands into online is not an option.
"Nothing is too small and nothing too big to cover, and online tools such as geo-tagging offer us ways to talk to our communities in ways we just could not do in print," says Thwaites.
Changes for journalists
One of biggest successes of the north east titles has been the impact it has had on those journalists implementing the changes.
"The development over the last few years has really given me a renewed appetite for the industry," says Thwaites, who is three-and-a-half years into his editorship.
"It's good innovation, and it makes commercial sense. It is generating significant and targeted audiences and that gives us a geographical and demographic advantage."
McKenzie too has been reinvigorated by working online:
"Having been news editor for three years, I felt it was time for a new challenge - one that took me out of my print comfort zone," he says.
"It was a chance to be at the sharp end during a period of intense change in the industry, a chance to lead from the front as we try to re-imagine and reinvent what we do and how we communicate with people."
Finance reporter - property
